Sunday, December 27, 2009

Free Is in the Eye of the Beholden...

While watching TV late at night at the folks' house, I saw a new commercial for a service that charges you for a credit report. Well, technically, they don't charge you for a report -- that's free. But you don't get the report unless you enroll in a credit monitoring program, and that costs you a monthly fee after the trial period.

Of course, the law allows a person to request a report of their credit history free of charge once every 12 months -- including from the company that runs the service that isn't completely free.

The company has made several try-to-be-clever commercials with their curly-headed protagonist detailing, in several musical genres, how his inattention to his credit rating left him unable to buy a house, cool car, mountain bike, modern cell phone or to get a good job.

I also noticed that, according to Facebook, I had a chance to become a fan of the band. I'm pretty sure that "fan" isn't synonymous with "someone who wishes you would just shut up and go back to making French-language movies about infidelity," so I passed. Funny thing here -- the lead "singer" is French-Canadian and speaks English with a decided accent, so his voice in the commercials is dubbed. The songs were written by an ad guy who's also responsible for that ubiquitous faux-Cockney gecko who shills for an insurance company.

Maybe there's some kind of repellent that would get rid of them both.

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